RFID: Promise and Peril

If you're wearing or carrying anything with an embedded RFID tag, you could conceivably be tracked wherever you go.

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Every new technology embodies new risks. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags are increasingly popular, having made their debut in retail security tags for high-dollar merchandise. Unlike the little magnetic slugs in self-adhesive plastic packages (as you might find on CD cases), RFID tags are nearly flat and can do far more than set off an alarm as they pass through a door.

RFID is fairly sophisticated as far as antitheft technologies go: A transmitter at the door "illuminates" each tag, whose flat antenna picks up the electromagnetic or radio-frequency field. The energy from the door's transmitter then powers a tiny radio transmitter embedded in the tag. The tag's transmitter sends out an encoded stream of bitsin essence a radio bar codefor as long as it receives power. So not only can an item with an RFID tag alert store managers that it hasn't been paid for, but as you check out it can tell the store's information systems its color, its size, how long it had been on the shelves, and any other information the reseller or manufacturer chooses to put into the bitstream.

A scannable badge that lets you into your building at work and an E-ZPass or similar device that lets you drive on toll roads without stopping to pay are examples of RFID technology. But as the technology gets smaller and less expensive, these applications are the tip of a huge iceberg. We're moving toward a world where many semiconductor devices can be printed instead of grown and etched in silicon by expensive equipment.

Imagine a future in which every food item has an RFID and your refrigerator has a scanner. By knowing (or learning heuristically) how many times an item goes out and back in before it's exhausted, your fridge can remind you to put it on the grocery list. Imagine that RFIDs are woven into your garments. Your washing machine could choose the best setting for the clothes you put in it. Or it could refuse to wash an item that requires dry cleaning.

Networks and noses. When the technology gets even cheaper, new possibilities will emerge. Think about those little tags on fresh fruit. Today they each have just a number; 4016 is a Red Delicious apple. Now imagine not only an RFID but a node for a self-organizing or mesh network. You could illuminate a basket of apples, and they'd essentially count themselves. And if a rogue Granny Smith got in there, it would quickly identify itself.

Let's add a silicon "nose" to the chip: a sensor that's attuned to the unique gases emitted by a rotting apple. That bushel of apples could tell you whether it contained any bad ones and even their approximate location (always at the bottom, of course).

Self-inventorying retail shelves and warehouses will one day be commonplace. Not to dwell on the food-shopping angle, but imagine the convenience of bagging your groceries as you go up and down the aisles, then having the checkout device interrogate your entire shopping cart. You wouldn't have to handle each item three times before you've even left the supermarket.

The privacy angle. Now suppose that a market research company parks a van outside the supermarket and uses a directional antenna to scan your cart as you wheel it to your car. The grocery store has already done its research, but are your purchases fair game after you've left the store? Or what about an extension of van Eck phreaking (reading electromagnetic emanations at a distance)? Could a high-powered illuminator and a high-gain antenna inventory the contents of your home? It's certainly possible. If you're wearing or carrying anything with an embedded RFID tag, you could conceivably be tracked wherever you go.

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Of course, stores could disable RFID tags as a customer leaves, as they do with today's security tags. That would ensure your privacy but would render the tags useless for home recordkeeping and convenience applications. It's also conceivable that homes could one day be built the way we build embassies and military installations, with screening inside the walls to prevent RF snooping and inadvertent data leakage.

Come to think of it, with your home already bleeding Wi-Fi and wireless telephone signals, shielding may be a smart idea. Without an external antenna or repeater, though, your cell phone won't work. But perhaps that's an unanticipated benefit!

Bill Machrone is vice president of technology at Ziff Davis Publishing and editorial director of the Interactive Media and Development Group. He joined Ziff Davis in May 1983 as technical editor of PC Magazine, became editor-in-chief in September of that year, and held that position for the next eight years, while adding the titles of publisher and publishing director. During his tenure, Machrone created the tough, labs-based comparison reviews that propelled PC Magazine to the forefront of the industry and made it the seventh-largest magazine...
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